Operationalisation of sustainable development: A case study of transit oriented development in Woolloongabba

In light of the issues on economic, social and environment sustainability, the term „sustainable development‟ is probably one of the often used phrases in any planning or policy making documents today. But ironically the term is rarely defined to the extent that it is easily understood. In this study we based our fundamental premises on two main questions: 1.What is sustainable development? 2. How to achieve sustainable development? To answer these questions we reviewed relevant literatures and conducted a case study of Woolloongabba, Brisbane as planning and policy efforts often starts at the suburban level where if a development is to sustainable it must first be sustainable at this level. In more specific terms, we have enquired the impacts of transit oriented development (TOD) on Woolloongabba as a way to operationalise sustainable development. Based on our preliminary findings we argue that developments have the ability change the structure of a community in regards to its demographics and dwelling structures. On this note, we suggested that the only way for a development to be sustainable is by ensuring development objectives and community interests are paralleled as a development will only be sustainable if the local community‟s needs are fulfilled. In this study we found further opportunities for future researches to conduct a full scale research in investigations of sustainable development on a suburban level as we found very few contemporary literature have pay its attention on such study while it is often that at the local level developments start to take its effect towards sustainability